New Dive Video

Please have a look at our new dive video, offering a great insight to what diving is like when staying with us at Paradise Taveuni.  Vinaka

We are excited to announce our brand new website.  Please have a look and give us some feedback.  Vinaka.

www.paradiseinfiji.com

David Ireland, Wildlife Man Footage

David Ireland has released some of his footage filmed while staying with us at Paradise Taveuni.  Here is a clip of wonderful Taveuni Island, great diving, and the Paradise Resort.    Check out the amazing underwater life and beautiful coral.

Taveuni Consistently Ranked Top Dives in the World

Taveuni and the legendary Rainbow Reef, hosting the famous Great White Wall, has consistently been ranked as some of the best diving in the world.  Taveuni, known for being the "Soft Coral Capital of the World," offers you some of the best and most memorable dives you will have.  You can experience all of this with top notch accommodation and dive shop here at Paradise Taveuni.  Take a look at the article below.

Top 8 Dives

David Ireland, Wildlife Man

Paradise has recently hosted David Ireland, the Wildlife Man, coming from Australia.  David is a world renown wildlife film producer who has worked with discovery channel and also releases independent films.  While in Taveuni he did extensive diving as well as traveling around the island, all while filming in HD for Paradise.  Keep your eyes peeled some footage here in the near future, we will keep you updated.  

Merry Xmas & Happy New Year

I have to start of by apologizing for being so quiet in the last few weeks and not writing and letting you guys know what has been happening in and out of the water at Paradise the last few weeks. I can promise you its not because there has not been anything to write about, there has been so much happening and now there is lots to write about it.

We have been really busy with loads of divers, courses and events happening in the last two weeks. I have been teaching my first PADI Dive Master course and it kept me well busy. Cecilia came to stay at Paradise for the second time around and this time it was for her to enter the world of professional divers. She has been wanting to complete her DM course for the past 15 years so it has been a big buildup to a course that was well worth it in the end. After spending many hours underwater practicing skills, making maps, doing search and recovery scenarios, working with students and loads of workshops she finally passed all her exams with flying colors. Before I started this course I started thinking back to how much I learned and enjoyed my course and this is exactly what I wanted to give to her. She is a confident diver, great student and a wonderful person whom I will never forget. Not just cause she was my 1^st DM course but also cause of the wonderful lady she is and the great luck she had with all the Manta rays!

When Cecilia arrived she joined Kim for an afternoon shore dive and it wasn’t long before they spotted the 1^st Manta on a dive for this season. Every afternoon after dives and courses she would swim out from the dock to go looking for the Mantas. After her 1^st snorkel session she came back exstatic from seeing two Mantas and a Hammerhead shark. Of course everybody was joking about it as she never took her camera, so she went back the following day with a camera and returned with the proof of the Mantas on her camera. During her stay her cousin also visited us from Italy. She not being a diver, we convinced her to take a Discover Scuba course with Marion our reservations manager. After an hour or so in the pool we took them for a shore dive and it wasn’t even 5mins when the Manta swam straight past us on their 1^st dive ever! For me this is such an unbelievable experience for these guys as it took me over 700 dives before I saw my 1^st Manta! The girls came back smiling and I’m glad they enjoyed it.

Like always the diving has been great. Mantas on shore dives and making appearances at Vuna Reef, Leopard sharks, amazing Nudibranches, a Star gazer (which I have never seen before), great dives on the White Wall and some very interesting currents have made divers from all over leave with big smiles. A couple of Open Water courses has also been great fun! Such fortunate divers to come and get qualified in the amazing waters of Taveuni, Fiji.

Out side of the water we have also been having a great time with the Christmas and New Years. We had such a great day with many laughs at Paradise staff Xmas party. The staff brought their families for a day of fun here at the resort. Loads of games brought much laughter and the food everybody brought was delicious.

On Christmas eve we had a wonderful dinner with the guest and I really enjoyed hearing the local choir who came to perform for us!

New Years was also a fantastic evening! The resort was full house so lots of faces all around. Alan provided us with some great light shows that really got everybody going! It was a good night and an amazing way to go into the New Year!

I want to end off this blog to let everybody know that my housing has finally arrived back on the island and so you can expect to be seeing many more underwater photos. ALSO a new toy called the Go Pro Hero camera has arrived. This is my new filming device so keep an eye out for some video footage in the near future!

Good fishing, diving and Mantas!

Activities have been running above and below the water showing the guests all the best Fiji has on offer.. Fishing trips were super successful, once the birds were found the rods started to provide some action. Two of our guests came back with 2 Mahi Mahi and a tuna which made great sashimi. 


Jessica finally got put into the water after much preparation, on her first cruise CJ and Jay witnessed a manta breach just off Paradise’s house reef. The first one seen this season so watch this space.


 Snorkelers were greeted by a hawksbill turtle, napolean wrasse and white tip reef shark whilst swimming in the shallows of the white wall. Snorkelling Nuku reef was like being in our own personal aquarium, we dropped down on a white tip reef shark which hung with us for an hour and in for a closer look. Just before getting on the boat we had an eagle ray swim in the blue what a sight. Pinnacle dive site on vuna reef has been  revisited by one of guests almost every day this week as it has been satisfying both his desires for macro and micro photography - schools of batfish, barracuda, sharks, rays and a quick stop for a manicure by the cleaner shrimps. 

We got some downtime and headed off for some island exploring. It was our first venture past the airport and we were blown away by the picturesque white sandy beaches with palm trees as far as the eye can see and surrounding islands that one can encounter on your way to Bouma village. The ten minute walk to the first waterfall literally feels like you’ve landed yourself in a Jurrasic park set you almost waiting for a teradectile to appear at any moment. We climbed a few rocks and took a run up to jump into the coldest waters you will probably find on the island but is welcomed after the walk in the sun and humidity. There is definitely something majestic about the falls and you can just sit and watch the water crashing down for hours. 

The Sun Is Back!

After a few weeks of rain, rain and more rain the sun finally decided to start showing its face again. For us divers, this makes a magnificent change in the diving and its great! Finally the corral’s colors are on display again and it is stunning.

The beginning of the week was very quiet but finally the dive center is buzzing with new faces very excited about the diving. One of the guests in particular has reminded me what it is like being a new diver again. I’m not talking about being low on air really early on dive no. I’m talking about the excitement of discovering a new world! In all my years of diving I have never seen an open water diver get such a high from just one dive. Literally shaking from the excitement just after his first check out dive on our house reef. He never even stopped smiling till the following dive on the next day till the nerves started kicking in to do his fist adventure deep dive. After a good briefing and some reassuring that the deep dive will even be better, we hopped into the water for his fist peek at the world below 20meters. Even though his dive was a bit shorter than the rest, he loved it! Now his excitement levels matches those of a 10year old the day before Christmas.

This is why I became a diving instructor, to share my passion for our underwater world with others and teach them how to protect it.

Even though sunlight has been limited, one dive that stood out from the rest was a dive on Vuna Reef at a site called Orgasm. With a small group we went down, arriving on the reef there was a small Hawksbill Turtle to welcome us, not fazed about us at all he just lifted his head, had a look and went back to sleep, a perfect photo opportunity. Continuing down the reef onto the drop off we saw a massive school of Batfish making their way below us coming up for a quick look, then making way again into the deep. The reef it self was zooming with life! Loads of Anthias, Goldies, and Damzels all hovering over their own plot of coral. Just keeping their distance in front of us was something I have never seen before, schooling Red Snappers. I personally think it was something to do with mating season but it was great to see. As they moved into the shallows a massive school of Blue and Yellow Fusiliers took their space coming straight for us. They school swallowed us and just like the turtle they very not fazed. Swooping around and in between the divers flashing their bright colors whilst feeding on the plankton drifting in the current. With no warning they all dashed down low onto the reef for at first no reason, but very soon it was made clear by the school of Barracudas that made their way over to us. Very curious of the divers they started circling us creating a whirlpool of Barracudas with divers stuck at the bottom. Moments like this make me want to cry! Not because of the beauty. Because I cant bring my camera down on dives that I’m leading and this would have been a photo to be framed and put onto the wall of favorites!  Once the Barracudas moved off to the side the Fusiliers came up, the Snappers came back from the shallows AND the school of Batfish came back up from the deep for a second peak at the divers. Barracudas behind me, Fusiliers all around me, Batfish underneath me and the Snappers in front of me. 

Now I understand why they call this site Orgasm.

Long exposure photo of divers come back from their night dive

Kimi doing her briefing for the shore entry dive.

It's a tough job, but some one has to do it!

Diving in paradise has been somewhat quiet this week and divers have been loving the serenity of being the only ones on the dive.

Barracuda hole has definitely been a highlight dive. We dropped on the sight and it was literally beaming with life in all directions. As soon as we dropped we saw two white tips followed by a ridiculously big Spanish mackeral and schooling barracuda. A black ribbon eel, popcorn shrimp, nudibranch, giant moray and garden eels were some of the many macro life to be seen. 

I'm sure everybody has been to a dive site that they will never get sick of diving. That one you will never forget, the one where you saw your first and your biggest. Or the one that will always keep you amazed! The Great White Wall is doing just that. This week we had our best dive yet on the wall and it was amazing. With the new moon around the corner currents have been acting a bit strange but our timing was perfect and so was the dive. As we were the only dive center on the reef at the time and hardly any current, we could really take our time on the wall. The best part was not just being able to have a closer look at the soft corrals, but to be able to to swim back into the blue, back away from the wall to bring it all into sight and just stare and appreciate. As I mentioned in previous blogs, never ever have I ever seen any thing like this before. It really is spectacular!

Night dives done off the shore at paradise impressed us all as the creatures of the night came out to play. - ribbon eel, cleaner banded boxer shrimp, octopus displaying their colour change escape tactics, juvenile lionfish bouncing around, massive puffer not phased by us what so ever, scorpion fish stalking his pray and loads of shrimps crawling from their hide outs. Towards the end of the dive we had a lights out and enjoyed the view of the luminescence surround us.   

CJ has been needing his pizza fix so we headed down to a local restaurant and enjoyed a few Fiji Bitters, pizzas oozing with cheese and good company whilst taking in the beautiful sight of Taveuni's coastline and watching some local kids surfing the small reef brake right in front of the restaurant. During downtime a deep tissue massage at the spa was just what was needed after a tough weeks work.

 Its a tough life... 

           

The Underwater Realm

After two weeks of diving and snorkelling in Taveuni and we still cant get enough. Divers have been really impressed by the divesite ‘the stairs’. Its main attractions are the two swim throughs. The first starts at 24m and as you enter you are mesmerized by the beautiful white soft coral surrounding you, similar to that found on the famous great white wall.

On our last dive there we had a grey reef shark waiting for us at the exit of the shallow swim through and a few decent sized white tips were doing their rounds. Fish factory has definitely been living up to its name by giving us the opportunity to see loads of white tips, turtles, giant moray eels and tuna. Jerrys Jelly was busy as always with antheas surrounding us in great numbers and shooting off into all directions as the trevellie hunt them down. We were greeted by a napoleon wrasse and a sandy patch with loads of garden eels bobbing about.

Our snorkelers have also been in for a treat. Snorkelling on rainbow reef was amazing, we had 2 white tips coming in for a closer look, so close we could almost touch them, black tip, moray eels, oriental sweetlip as well as turtles and we still had some time in between to explore the picturesque waitatavi beach. Vuna reef snorkelling was just as good- dolphins putting on a show for guests, a huge napoleon wrasse, giant moray swimming under us as well as some barracuda in open water. It’s a real hard life for us here at paradise Taveuni.